Turning Tricks
by TanuKyle
Summary: KyuuNaru, a oneshot that developed a plot. Your hand hovers over your stomach, the black swirl an invisible reminder - and you can't remember you can't, you won't!
1. Chapter 1

The car was the best place to sleep in the whole station.

It didn't have any engine or radio or wheels – anything saleable or salvageable had long ago been torn out and sold or traded for things the group actually needed. Their patch wasn't so great, otherwise, but the car was top-notch. It was right under the tracks or something- you could hear the trains thundering louder than usual – but it was warm. Under a cooling vent, hot air blasted outwards, cocooning the car in beautiful warmth, and trickling down to the layers below. The higher-up your level the better you were. The leaders had the sleeping holes just below the car. No leader ever tried to claim the car though. It was…special. Nobody slept in the car unless they'd earned it. Tonight you'd earned it.

You had your own name, your secret name, the name that tied you to a past that you didn't want and yet craved for, but the group called you Tricks, because you were loud and boisterous and with your sunshine hair you caught every eye going – but that was the point, wasn't it. You were the diversion and the prankster, the boy who was kept clean and shiny, and knew how to attract attention because that was the point.

Today you had pulled off a big trick, distracting a rich man. You'd been subtly doing it for weeks, but today had been a triumph- the crew had got what they needed, and you'd 'escaped' without causing a scene, pretending your mother would be worried, especially since you injured yourself, then rubbing a little dirt from your face. The man had ruffled your hair and pressed a silver coin into your hand and you'd made your eyes go circular in the way that all small children could do, even though you weren't small, at least not in your head – but malnourishment meant that you never really grew – and babbled some bull about buying sweeties. Sweeties. You snort lightly, and you might have rolled over, only every kid in this patch has it drilled into them never to roll over when in a sleeping hollow. The newbies were at the bottom 'cause it was the worst and cold, but also because it was only a few feet fall to the floor, bruises and bumps sure but they wouldn't break things. Sweets...hah. The money would go on blankets, most likely. Rice maybe, though the food heater needed a new fuel cell, so it might be put towards that.

Normally during the day you don't have time to think about things. You're busy scavenging or patching people up, or fighting or stealing or distracting. Busy surviving. That's why everybody is tired at night, why nobody has nightmares – because every second of the day they push themselves.

But you're different.

You've always been different, so it's no real surprise.

You run a hand over your T-shirt, shuddering fingers pausing just above your stomach. You know it's there. It will always be there. You just don't think about it because it makes you think about things. You should stop thinking. You need to stop thinking.

But you can't.

Faces flash through your head. The only one your age, your cellmate. A boy, red hair with green eyes. He was almost like you because you both snapped and snarled like animals. The two next door, a burly boy, dark skinned and a girl with sharp features and blonde hair. They snuck you food, once and you had blinked at them and nipped their fingers thankfully and the girl had clenched her fist and said something and you hadn't understood because at that time you couldn't understand speech, but she'd put her hand on your head and inside your head you called her mother and looked out for her every time and when nobody was looking you might nuzzle into her just a little.

You had to stop thinking.

You had to stop thinking about it.

The older ones, the ones you didn't see because they were either mad or broken. The one who smelled like flowers more than anything else and you didn't know the gender and he-she was almost stable until you took him away from the gardens. The man who sat on the earth and felt like fire and who's eyes followed you even after you left. The one you couldn't see because he was covered in a strange, strange thing but whenever you were near him you were so afraid. The one who sang and blew bubbles who was safe because he didn't notice anybody and the singing was terrifying and beautiful. And the girl who sounded fine, who looked fine, who played with the young ones and threw scraps of meat for you and red-head, but when she saw anything white she screamed and screamed and screamed.

You had to stop thinking about it because he was gone and he wouldn't come back.

So you clench your fingers tight in your shirt and slam your eyes close and don't allow any thoughts at all.

And as sleep takes you in her dark-feathered arms, the last think you remember is an orange-tinted smile.


	2. Chapter 2

You twitch lightly, drawn out of the blissful warmth of the car and your sleep by a loud noise. By the loudest noise. By the noise of gunshots. You freeze instinctively, slinking lowly, silently, to the lowest point of the car. You feel more awake. More alert. Later you will realise it is because last night you remembered, and the instincts that used to be so ingrained are taking hold again. But for now you are busy hiding. You can't stay. The guards know where the kids sleep in the station. You will run with the rest, help patch up those who got shot, and return in a week. They try and clear you all out, occasionally, but it's a futile task. There are miles and miles of underground tunnels, half of them ready to collapse, and thousands upon thousands of cracks and empty pipes that interconnect them in a maze no adult could fit through.

You crawl into the empty engine space, and rub your hands over the dirt accumulated there. You cannot attract attention now. Now is not a time to be noticed. You rub oil and dirt into your hair, dulling it. After that's done you do your clothes. They'll have to be passed on later, you'll be no good as a cute distraction with dirty clothes. But surviving comes first. Dulled, dirtied, you peer through a gap in the framework.

It's not the station guards.

The seal on your belly pulses, a half-forgotten surge of heat and power.

It's not the station guards at all.

You know those coats.

Those eyes.

You can't hide from them.

You just have to run faster than they do.

You have to run faster and hit harder, and you have to find the others first.

You know where they have gone.

Because you all ran together.

You ran and then you separated, and you hid and you cried.

And then you picked up the pieces and wrapped up the memories in a blanket so they wouldn't hurt you.

But now you have to stick your hand in the fire.

So you dart upwards. The car is at the top of the pile. But above the car is pipes and wires, slippy with grease and oil and fragile with age – but you can't afford to think right now. Right now you have to run. You can think later. You leap, arms outstretched, and you grasp, scrabbling at a greased, oily pipe, and through sheer determination you stay on because you absolutely cannot afford to fall.

No mistake can be made, because this isn't just about you or the kids you've fallen in with any longer.

Now it about the nine, about memories and power and a promise made over the blood of the world.

But first you have to escape. You won't do anything if you fall or are too loud, if a stray bullet gets you. You cling to the filthy pipe, edging along slowly. The time for speed will be later, but right now it's more important to be quiet and to test each section, probing with your fingers. You can feel the skin being ripped off by the rough surface and the shards of ripped metal. The pain makes your teeth clench, especially when the dirt rubs into the cuts and grazes. You can't stop though.

Not even for a second to breathe and clench your eyes shut and hiss out the pain.

You can't distract yourself because that would prove fatal.

So you let the pain in and tears well at the corners of your eyes but that's okay because the pain means you haven't failed yet.

Doesn't really stop it hurting, though.

You remember that sometimes (after it was decided you needed to be taught intelligence), that mother told you stories. That all of you (you remember the older ones quieted a little too, sometimes, strained their ears to overhear), pressed to the corner of your cages to listen to her voice. It wasn't particularly pleasant, as voices go, rough from screaming and sharp from anger, but the stories she told were as beautiful as they were haunting. As you slither into one of the secure wall-pipes and nestle in there, knowing that you need to wait till they move on a little before attempting the next crossing (despite all your instincts and memories screaming; RUN RUN RUN OHGODRUN), you distract yourself from the pain in your fingers and the twitching of your legs by recalling a particular story.

It was a story about a hero, and she told it in two parts.

The first one was the tale what was told: That the Hero went out to rescue the Land from Evil. He died doing it but the Land was free and Good reigned so he died in Peace.

The second one is what really happened, because everybody glosses over things to make themselves feel better. Villages erected signs to say: he was here – but they didn't mention they'd put him in the stables or denied him service.

He wasn't a hero, to begin with. He was just a boy with dreams and a sense of right and wrong. Actually, the villagers didn't like him much, because he was strong and didn't like to see evil, and they did petty evil every day. So they told him stories about the dark in the distance and fed him tales (they didn't expect him to do it, didn't expect him to come back a hero (even posthumously) they didn't expect it at all.) about courage and adventure. And so the boy gathered up his tools and his wits and the little coppers he'd managed to save over the years and set off.

At first it was fun. He marched along the road in the sunshine and drank water from his bottle.

But then his bottle ran out so he had to buy another and it was expensive, so he didn't have many coppers left. He went to try and find a job but nobody would hire him because he was young and strange-looking.

And the adventure became less of an adventure and more of a struggle to keep moving and survive.

When people tell the tale they skip over the nights spent freezing, huddling behind bins and wondering if he would die. They skip over the kids throwing rocks at him as he grew more skeletal and thin, and they skip over the months spent as an inmate of the evil lords cells - where the lord's most trusted servant fed him because he loved him – of course a most evil sin to love a monster such as the servant, and how they tried to escape (somebody else could kill him, the lord), and then the lord killed his servant and the hero had nothing else to live for so he killed him.

(when they returned to the town there was only the body of the boy)

(the soul had gone, the boy who loved monsters and believed in the world)

And all that was left was a false image of what had gone, polished and primped and pruned so that it could be swallowed by the masses.

But those who knew the truth (one of the guards who found his body had found his journal) made sure that somebody remembered.

Made sure that it wasn't forgotten. Hidden, Obscured, perhaps told only once a lifetime, but never forgotten.

You didn't understand most of the words (You still don't understand some of them) but it made you happy to hear that someone else than you loved monsters .

Back then you thought that was the point of the tale.

Now you're wondering as you look upon the half-forgotten uniforms that are going into the next tunnel system, if it wasn't the point after all and it meant that you should keep your promises instead.

As if you'd ever forget.

You inch out of the tube, flex round the corner of the pipe like some kind of snake. A snake who's skin is getting ripped off by the inch. Owch. In a way it's a good thing that the pipes are so filthy. The dirt and soot is staunching the wounds even as they are made – you are not at risk of poison, and it means your blood isn't going to drip on anybody below and alert them to your presence.

Still hurts like hell though.

You've been through hell though.

And you won't ever go back.

You're in the pipe system now.

The small one. (the bigger kids don't fit, so there's no question of the adults following you here.)

As you wriggle through the pipes, now blessfully less rough, (you need to get to the sand-place where the redheaded one lives.) you realise that's it's quiet. That you haven't passed anybody.

These pipes should be full of children.

The bigger ones will have gone one of the the more dangerous routes – bigger but collapsible (they killed a few last spring.), or the water pipes (if you're fast enough it's fine, but not all of them can swim when the water gets high) – but these pipes should be full of the smaller kids. Last time the station guards came you could barely breathe the amount of kids.

…So why is it quiet?

You need to find the red-head and then the others.

You promised – more than promised.

But you've lived with these kids for a long time. They (adopted-cared-fed-saved) found you when you were running (crazy-mad-animal-wrong) wild and helped you (calm-pacify-notkill-notdie) survive. You don't (need-love-belong-areone) care for them as you do (the-nine-blood-of-the-world-blood-of-my-blood-everything-eternal) the others, but you care.

And the coatmen have stolen enough from you.

So you wriggle left instead of right.

And you see the coatmen rounding up the kids. One of them still crackles with (chakra) electricity. There's a limp child by his feet. You slip into a forgotten rage.

Your fingernails strengthen. You feel them lengthening into claws, and a flicker of red energy gathers round you. You won't be able to come back here anymore. You haven't thought that far ahead really, but now you won't be able to come back even if you find the nine quickly and nothings wrong.

Because they might have forgotten the coatmen, eventually. Attributed it to a weird happening, because adults pass by the radar, register as an enemy, no matter how weird or strange. They'd be added to the tales as a caution, but they'd slip out of memory easy enough.

But Tricks won't. They'll remember this, and you'll never be able to come back.

They'll tell the tale of the demon-child long after you've gone. But if it saves them you don't mind. They'll have to make their own choices, afterwards, like you did.

Maybe they'll die anyw-…..

"But it's better that they have a chance! That they get to make their own mistakes and choices! That it's not pre-fucking set by some dicks who are trying to control them!"

Maybe the nine would be glad you stopped after all.

You twitch a non-existant tail (you can't risk drawing that much power, but the feel of it is still there, you want it to be there), and whispering the beginnings of a spell you inch towards the edge of the pipe.

And there is blood and rage. The coatmen are babies at best, unskilled, fresh. Easy kills though your lack of use means you are rusty.s The word tingles on the tip of your tongue, fizzing almost. The children look at you, eyes wide, frozen.

You can see the leader. You bare your throat to him and make a low keening noise. He is less stunned and nods. You dart into the pipes and scramble through them.

_Genin. _

_The badly trained coatmen are Genin._


End file.
